Amputations
by Mun Pai
Summary: From dealing with dysfuntional families to car accidents to marriages, Gaara has seen it all...But what has he learned from any of it? Gaara's POV. AU.
1. All Your Fingers Stop at Ten

Amputations

Part One: All your fingers stop at ten.

There was a time when I knew everything, a time when I didn't have to be told what to do or how to do it. It was during those years of my life that I knew what I was doing, that I felt like I had control over where I went and what I chose to do. My family was the fools; they didn't know what was best for me. They told me to be careful, they told me that I had a "reputation to uphold and shouldn't ruin it." But back then, I knew it was all for their sake.

They were so concerned for their own appearance that they didn't pay attention to each other.

We weren't so much a "family," as we were a "unit." We were a unit that functioned in separate pieces, each one performing its own task, a poorly built machine. My father was not a responsible father. He did not try to keep his children close. He did not try to be affectionate. Instead, he was a cold man who distanced himself from us, putting his work first and us fifth (in between was his ego, his image, and any material items he owned). After him was my sister, a girl whose fingers were constantly slashed by paper because of the magazines she flipped through. She was a strong girl, someone who was not afraid to stand up for herself or for anyone she considered close to her. She took nothing for granted, while my brother took everything for granted. He was a true artist; someone who only did things when he wanted to and did not believe in deadlines.

Finally, there was me. I have thought about how I would describe myself if I ever wrote something, as I often had to do in primary school. But all I could think of were those primitive descriptions. "I have red hair." "I have green eyes." "I have an older sister and an older brother." "My name is Gaara." Other children wrote eloquent, praiseful things about their parents or their siblings. But my descriptions were always short, to the point sentences. I did not bother with things like "My mother's name is and I love her so much!"

I've always been different from my fellow classmates and employees. In fact, when I first discovered that I was different, was the second day of primary school. The teacher told us to come in front of the class and talk about our families. I sat in the back of the classroom, forcing myself to pay attention to what the other children prattled off. They all had a father, a mother, perhaps a brother or a sister, and some sort of pet, whether it was a dog, or a cat, or a fish, etc.

When it was my turn, I went to the front and stared up at the clock on the back wall instead of looking at the other students. They were all staring at me.

"I have a Dad who's got a really important job," was how I began, "And then there's my big sister, Temari, and my big brother, Kankurou, and me." I was about to go sit back down when one of the other children asked me a question that I did not particularly appreciate, even as a five-year-old.

The kid wound up being particularly snot-nosed and annoying. He later got what he deserved when we had recess. "Why don't you have a mom?" he blurted, completely unsuspecting that anyone could possibly only have one parent.

Parents were apparently units, also.

All I could do was stand there and stare dumbly at the clock, trying to ignore the kid's words. My father had reminded me day in and day out why I didn't have a mother. I had hoped that no one would bring it up in school. As usual, I was wrong. The fact that I did not have a mother was considered unusual by all the other children in the class. Their parents had all told them that the normal thing was for a Mommy and a Daddy to get children from some stork who dive-bombed their house with babies in white sacks.

Luckily, the teacher defended me. She stood up from her desk and ushered me back to my seat. "Gaara-kun's family is just different," she said as she walked to the front of the room, "But really, his father loves him just as much as all of your parents love all of you." She fixed me with a warm smile, as if she expected me to agree.

I just shrank back in my chair, wanting to sink into the floor and become speckled, tan tile.

From then on, I started to be different than the other kids in my class. It was not just that I didn't have a mother, although that had roused curiosity among them ("Does your dad do mom stuff too?" "Do you think you'll ever get a mom?"), but it was other, more petty things as well. I was much smaller than the other kids. My eyes were so pale the only parts that were truly visible were the pupils. My hair was bright red and always messy. They came to the conclusion that I looked so strange because of the fact that I did not have a mother.

I never understood their logic.

Primary school was the time in which I categorized myself as "weird." I would go home crying, hoping that I could talk with my father, thinking that maybe he could explain what was going on. Every time I tugged on the tail of his suit jacket, he waved his hand at me, like I was an irritating house fly. He told me he could not be bothered with my silly problems and that I was a boy; boys did not cry.

After him, I would go to Temari. When I was five, she was nine. She looked like an adult and acted like one, in my eyes. I admired her, even though she, too, would ignore me or tell me to go whine to Kankurou. So I did.

Kankurou, at that time, was seven years old. He was more concerned with making mud pies and slinging them at Temari than he was with listening to me whine. Once, when I asked him to help me, he told me to quit being a baby and dumped his bucket of mud on my head. He was a typical boy with a penchant for being dirty. That never really changed, although the meaning of "dirty" might have.

So I went to the only person I knew who seemed to like me in the slightest. My uncle, Yashamaru, was the younger brother of my deceased mother. Unlike my father, he did not blame me for my mother's death. He always talked to me patiently and explained everything that the other children said. According to him, they just did not understand what it was like…and people were afraid of things that they did not understand. So I just had to try and prove to the other kids that I was just like them.

I took Yashamaru's words to heart. The next day, at school, a group of kids from my class were playing with a ball, kicking it to one another. I was watching them from a swing set, thinking it would be fun to ask if I could join them. But these were the kids who really hated me. Among them was the snot-nosed brat who had alienated me in the first place.

I kept my eyes on him as he picked up the ball and threw it toward one of his friends but the other boy missed. The ball rolled over to my feet. I looked down at it, seeing every tiny groove and every grain of sand that stuck to its coral colored surface. Now would be my chance, I thought, as I got off of the swing and bent down to pick it up. One of the other kids was yelling at me, telling me to throw it back over to them.

But I wanted to be with them. I wanted to be a part of something. So I took a few steps toward them, thinking they would get the idea.

They did not.

Instead, the bratty kid started shouting at me, telling me to just throw it back to him. He said that I wasn't allowed to play with them because I was not normal. Naturally, his words hurt me.

I threw the ball back with as much force as I could muster, my anger backing it up.

The ball smacked that kid on the head, sending him sprawling onto the grass. I just stood there, watching as his friends crowded around him. They were all speechless. I was oddly satisfied. That kid had gotten what he deserved, I told myself. Maybe now he would realize that I was not just some stupid, small weirdo. Maybe now he would see that I could be just like him.

Fifteen minutes later, I was in the principal's office, sitting on a leather chair that was much too big for me. The principal of the school was an old, intimidating man with a puffy, purple vein on his forehead. All I remember was the boom of his voice and his pointing, accusing, thick fingers.

He only had nine fingers, I noticed. There were all sorts of rumors about _why _he did not have ten fingers. They ranged from simple ones like, "He was born with a little stub so they just cut it off," to things like, "Before he was a principal, he was in the _yakuza_ and he was disloyal to his boss, so they cut it off, knuckle by knuckle." As he yelled at me, I created my own scenarios in my mind.

Ten fingers was the normal amount. Not nine, not eleven…Ten. I was not the only weird person in the school, after all. But this man was intimidating…and through intimidation, he gained respect. I began thinking that that was what I would have to do in order to get the other kids to like me.

Yashamaru came to pick me up from school early that day, as I was not allowed to go back to class just yet. On the way home, he asked me what I had done and why I'd done it. I told him about the ball, the things the boy had said, and how it had been an accident that the ball had hit him on the head. I told him I was sorry and that I would never do anything like that again.

They were hollow words, though. In the back of my mind, I thought about how funny it had been to watch the boy fall over and his friends stare at me with their wide, dinner plate sized eyes before turning to him to see if he was all right. If I got another chance to do something like that, I would gladly accept it. School had started to get boring…and now I finally had something that was interesting…something that would get me noticed.

That was how I became somewhat of a bully. The other kids at school were scared of me but when I asked for something, they always gave whatever it was to me. I had gotten what I wanted; to be intimidating and respected. They did not tease me anymore. They did not even talk to me until I spoke to them. I kept telling myself over and over again that was how I wanted it to be.

If they did not speak to me, they would not tease me. They would not ask me questions about my mother…and they would never know that I had been the one who killed her.

The first three years of primary school flew by in a whirl of fights, bloody noses, and trips to the principal. My father disciplined me often, shouting at me that I needed to be a normal son; that I had a reputation to think about. Temari said nothing about it; she was too busy painting her fingernails and gossiping with friends. Kankurou was preoccupied with chopping rattlesnakes' heads off with a shovel he'd stolen from the neighbor's back yard.

But Yashamaru always welcomed me into his embrace. He told me he understood and that he still loved me, no matter what the principal or my father said.

And then, on January nineteenth, my seventh birthday, Yashamaru was gone. The police had arrested him.

I remember feeling very strange that day. I had been at Yashamaru's apartment the night before but I did not remember what we had done. Somehow, though, the police had shown up and took him away before I even woke up.

The only person who had ever meant anything to me was out of my life now.

…Until he showed back up, nine years later, as a very different person.

(Author's Note: This fan fiction is inspired by two very different things: "You can Play these Songs with Chords" by Death Cab for Cutie, and a livejournal RP I'm in called "Oshima High," in which I play Gaara.

This is not going to be a happy story or a clean story. It will have references to drug usage, homosexuality, incest, and violence. So, if you don't think you can handle that, please turn back now! 3

The rest of you, I hope you enjoy!)


	2. Twenty Four Hours in June

Amputations

Part Two: Twenty-Four Hours in June

With Yashamaru out of my life, things automatically took a turn for the worst. He had been the one I went to when I was having problems. He was the only one who understood me…the only one who _loved _me. Now that he was gone, I was alone. There was no one to tell me that I would be all right. I was just left with my Father, Temari, and Kankurou, three people who barely even noticed I existed.

And so I became invisible.

More often than not, I was left on my own most of the day. When summer came, everyone else would be gone before I even got out of bed. That was the summer I came to hate cereal and anything instant. No one was around to cook and as a child of seven, I had no idea how to go about making anything. Instant ramen, Shin Ramyun (Temari loved Korean foods), cereal, granola bars…pretty much anything that I did not actually have to _cook _was what I ate became my enemy.

Food was not the only problem.

I was a seven year old with no friends. There was no way I was just going to stay in the house all day, like my Father had instructed me to. Temari and Kankurou were able to go out with their friends. Just because I did not know anyone did not mean I had to stay walled up.

During the summer, I took that chance to take a look around the so-called forest that was not too far away from our house. The first time I went in, I ended up getting lost for six hours. The more I explored, though, the easier it was to find my way back out again and get home before anyone else did.

Inside of the forest was a swampy area. By that time, I had developed the same appreciation for mud, bugs, and other disgusting things little boys liked that my brother had. Naturally, I spent most of my day there, wading around in sludge and catching frogs and salamanders. For a long time, it became a haven for me. While I was alone in the house, it made me uncomfortable with its high ceilings and long hallways. The swamp was a much welcome refuge. There, I did not have to worry about people yelling at me or hurting me. I was the only human for miles.

Until one day, when I got there later than I usually did. There was a group of kids in the swamp. One of them was yelling about some bull frog he had just caught and was jumping around, splashing water all over his friends. I stayed behind a tree, listening. My refuge had been taken from me too, now. I would either have to find somewhere new, or tell these kids to get out.

Something twisted inside of me, telling me to go into the swamp and make them leave. Without realizing it, I stepped out, getting my first good look at three people who would affect my life more than I ever could have realized then. The boy with the bullfrog had a shock of blond hair and large blue eyes. I remember him wearing an ugly orange shirt and blue shorts that day. The other boy was slightly taller than the blond. His hair was black and his skin was a milky, pale tone. With his hands on his hips, he gave off a very conceited air. Aside from the two of them, was a girl who was standing at the edge of the pond, making a disgusted face at the frog her friend held. Her hair was a strange mix of blonde and red. When it hit the sunlight just right, it looked pink.

The black haired boy narrowed his eyes at me. "What do you want?" he asked, not even bothering to say hello. Right from the start, he did not like me. That was never going to change.

I lifted my head confidently, even though he was taller than me. "This is my place," I replied, "You guys have to leave." It was a stupid, childish thing for me to say but I had really become attached to that swamp, for whatever reason. If I could not go there for privacy, then I could not go anywhere.

"Hey, hey, this doesn't belong to anybody!" the blond boy shouted, waving the frog up and down. It was squirming madly in his hands. "We can share!" He grinned at me, like a fox might grin at its prey. I was not sure if I liked the way he looked…But if he was willing to let me stay, then that was fine for the time being. Eventually, I could make them leave if I wanted to.

Of course, that suggestion did not sit well with the other boy. He scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he said and shoved his hands indignantly into his pockets. His holier-than-thou attitude was already starting to make me angry.

The girl, however, seemed to want to try and become friends. She smiled at me and said, "My name's Sakura. What's yours?" Obviously, she went to a different school, otherwise she would not have tried to be so friendly. Everyone at my school knew who I was and what I did. That was the reason I had spent summer alone.

"Gaara," I replied simply, not thinking that they might have had friends from my school.

It turned out that the blond's name was Naruto and his friend's name was Sasuke. For the rest of the summer, we caught toads and other unknown creatures together in the swamp. I never really looked at them as friends because I kept telling myself that eventually they would push me away just like everyone at my school did. But it did not happen.

Near the end of the summer, though, we found a snake. It was slithering toward the pond, flicking its tongue and searching for little animals to swallow. We all watched it from the other side, wondering what kind of snake it was. I wondered if Kankurou would have chopped its head off if he was there. It slipped into the water, the only hint that it had been there now was the ripples spreading across the mostly stagnant water. None of us knew where it would come out so we just stayed put.

It came slithering out of the pond right by Sasuke's feet. Naruto and Sakura did not seem to notice; they were still looking around the pond, trying to figure out where it was in the water. I opened my mouth to tell Sasuke to move but right when I did, the snake lifted its triangular head off of the damp ground and sank its fangs into his calve.

At first, he just stood there, staring dumbly down at the snake. Only after the creature let go and slithered off did his mind register what had happened. His dark eyes widened as the puncture wounds started to swell and bleed. The rest of us just watched as he fell to his knees, gasping and crying, pain flaring up his leg. He did not look at us; he seemed to be blinded by the fire shooting through his veins.

Sakura, ever the calm one, instructed Naruto and I to wait with Sasuke while she went to get her mother, who was a doctor.

It was the last time any of us were allowed to go into the swamp.

It was also the last time I saw the three of them that year.

As soon as my Father heard about what happened, he placed the blame on me. At home that night, he beat me hard and told me that if I hadn't lured those other kids into the swamp, one of them would not be in the hospital now. Temari and Kankurou did not bother to get involved, as usual. Neither of them wanted our Father after them.

Sore and upset, I spent the rest of the summer in the house, as I had originally been instructed to. I was never told if Sasuke's condition improved or worsened. Sometimes, I had nightmares about that snake eating all three of them, leaving me alone in a swamp that turned into my house. I always woke up from those dreams drenched in sweat and crying.

But now there was no one there to tell me it was just a dream; that it did not really happen.

What if Sasuke had died because of me?

Summer ended and another year of primary school began. Just like the last few years, I was alienated from the rest of the class. Some of them had even heard about what had happened in the swamp. I had not known it then, but Sasuke's family was well known in the city that was not far from where we all lived. That news did nothing to help me, although through eavesdropping I was able to discover that he went home from the hospital without more than two tiny scars.

The next few years continued in this manner. I remained on my own; a guest in my own family's home. With each passing year, I became more and more accustomed to being alone and hurting others. It was almost like a second nature. I thought nothing of the time when I stabbed Kankurou in the leg with one of his modeling knives or when I made a classmate scrape his knees against asphalt. To me, I was just doing what I had always done. None of it was particularly bad, really. I could have done worse.

In January, around the time I turned nine, I was home alone, as usual. The phone rang and naturally, I answered it, expecting it to be a friend of one of my siblings or one of my Father's business partners.

"Hello, Gaara-kun."

It was Yashamaru.

As soon as I registered his voice, my knees weakened. A cold sweat covered my body. I did not understand my own reaction…but I also did not understand why he was calling. I told him that.

"I just wanted to tell you that I'm not in prison anymore," he explained, "But I'm going away for a while…I'll be back some time, though. Don't worry."

He told me he loved me and ended the phone call. I held the receiver to my ear, staring blankly toward the wall. For a few minutes, I told myself that it had all been some sort of dream. I wanted to convince myself that Yashamaru had not just contacted me because if I knew he was out there…I wanted to go after him and get away from my family.

But at the same time, I felt sick. A flash in my mind showed me a knife. Words echoed in my ears. My head spun. I put the receiver back on the cradle and leaned heavily against the wall. This reaction made no sense to me. Yashamaru had been such an important person to me. Why should I feel so scared and sick now?

I blacked out.

I woke up to a harsh slap across my face. My father was leaning over me, whispering harshly and telling me to go to my room and to not come out until he came and got me. Behind him, I could see the fuzzy contours of some of his coworkers. I was lying on the floor in the middle of the entryway. A kitchen knife lay next to my right hand. Blood pooled in my left palm.

Dazed, I pushed myself up and stumbled back to my room. I left the knife on the floor and tried to ignore the burning pain in my hand. Confused, I sat down on my bed and examined the wound. It did not look too deep but it was bleeding profusely and it stung worse than any other cut I had ever received. I bit my lip, wanting to look away, but the way the thick, red liquid oozed from the opening in my skin strangely fascinated me. I flexed my hand, pain spreading like a wildfire.

The door opened and much to my surprise, there was Temari. She came inside without a word and shut the door behind her. "What happened?" she asked as she sat down next to me and roughly grabbed my hand, shocking me out of my trance.

"…I don't know," I replied honestly. I had fainted in the kitchen and yet I had woken up by the front door…with a knife and a scratch on my hand.

Temari's mouth formed into a frustrated line. "Yeah, right, Gaara," she snorted and pulled me up. Without another word, she dragged me from my room, despite our Father's orders and took me into the bathroom. She turned on the faucet and thrust my bleeding hand underneath it. The water made the scratch sting even more. I winced and tried to pull away but her grip was too strong.

Once the blood washed away, she turned off the water and wiped off my hand. "You're lucky it's not really deep," she said as she rummaged around for the gauze that was kept in the medicine cabinet. Before I could say whether I agreed with her or not, she wrapped up my hand and sent me back to my room.

I could not feel my fingers.

(Author's Note: Well, I s'pose I'm really inspired at the moment; two chapters in one day. Ehehe…Anyway, stay tuned for more!)


	3. The Success of Children

Amputations

Part Three: The Success of Children

Incidents like that continued to occur even after that day. Most of the time, I would wake up in strange places around the house; in the bathtub, in my sister's closet, on the kitchen counter. But since the first time, I never had a knife with me; my father had locked them up in the highest shelf so that I could not get to them. He had called me a freak and said that there was no way I would ever truly be considered his son.

Over the years, I thought I had numbed myself against him. I tried to tell myself that what he said did not matter. But when I saw Temari and Kankurou, watching he and I scream at each other, I realized something.

I really was the one tearing this family apart. If I had not of been born, my Mother would not have died. Temari and Kankurou could have had a normal family. They would not have to deal with an abusive father and a stupid little brother. Maybe if I was not around, Temari and Kankurou would get along better…maybe they would have a better relationship with their Father.

But these thoughts were pointless. I had been born. Mother died. Father placed the blame on me and I believed him. Temari and Kankurou were cursed right from that day onward to never have the love they deserved.

As I lay on the floor, trying to regain some sense of where I was, I knew that just like in school, I was alienated from my own family. They would never love me…They did not _have_ to love me; I ruined everything. I wanted to run away or just stop living entirely. Deep down, I wanted someone to love me.

December of my ninth year was another month of turning points. Temari had some friends over, Kankurou and my Father were both out somewhere. As usual, my sister and her friends were sitting in a misshapen circle in the living room, gossiping about boys. By that time, Temari was thirteen and in her second year of junior high. She was starting to get into the phase in which she thought that she was the only person in the world who knew anything. Her friends all seemed to have the same perspective on life; each of them thought the other was wrong about such-and-such boy and how whoever was much cuter than what's-his-name.

Being the appropriately nosey younger brother, I managed to find a decent hiding place in the hallway where I could sit and listen to them. Really, I did not understand most of what they were talking about. Thirteen year old girls were as alien to me as any actual aliens I saw on television. One of them was talking about how she thought it was gross that one of her other classmates did not wear a bra. All I knew about bras at that time was that they were underwear for girls. Once or twice, I had gone through Temari's underwear drawer to find such an item. They were almost always pink or some other pastel shade and usually had a little snap in the front or the back. Despite the simple design, I really was not sure what they were for.

The girls were laughing now, saying how immature whoever it was that did not wear a bra was. Too curious for my own good, I emerged from my hiding place like a mouse popping out of a hole in the wall. Temari and her friends all stared at me questioningly. None of them said anything, like they had not said anything at all. So I took it that they wanted me to ask them what I wanted to ask them.

"What're bras for?"

Naturally, all of the girls erupted into furious fits of laughter. They clutched at their sides and wobbled on their knees, unable to believe I had just asked such a silly question. But Temari was not laughing. Her arms were folded across her chest in a haughty manner. Anger flared in her eyes as she glowered at me. "Gaara, get out of here," she retorted, "You shouldn't even be out here when I have friends over!" She was angry and embarrassed because of my curiosity. Really, I had not done anything out of a desire to make her look bad in front of her friends. I just wanted to know something.

"It's just a question," I argued, hardly understanding why Temari was acting that way. I had thought, as a girl, something of that sort would not be embarrassing or rude. They all seemed to be having a good time giggling about bras so…what would be the problem for a boy to talk about them too?

That was the beginning of my difficulty with the opposite sex.

Temari scoffed and rolled her teal eyes. "Well it's not going to get answered," she said impatiently, "So just go away." Her face was turning red, a sign that she really was angry. All of her friends were starting to calm down, although when they looked at me, they would still snicker a little. I did not understand why it was so funny but then, girls were strange things. What they thought was funny and what I thought was funny were completely different things.

I gave up and retreated to my room. Already, I was plotting revenge in my head. Answers or not, I would find out what they were for in my own way.

Later that night, I crept into Temari's room. Over the past few hours, my curiosity had only grown stronger so I decided it was time to go and satisfy it. Quietly, I left my room and snuck through the hallway, to my sister's room. The house was dark and silent, which made it easier to sneak around without worrying about getting caught, though my mind played out multiple scenarios in which my father found me going through my sister's underwear drawer.

I almost went back.

But my curiosity and determination forced me to keep going. I could deal with being caught if I got caught. My Father's abuse was nothing new and my body had already been bruised enough from the previous day that I thought I could handle anything he might throw at me. Of course, my mind was not really on the possibility of another beating. It was preoccupied with wondering about the mysterious feminine undergarment that was a "bra."

Kids my age all looked the same. Aside from girls with long hair who wore dresses, we all had the same androgynous appearances. Now that Temari was getting older, though, I started to realize that boys and girls _were _different. Temari did things that Kankurou and I never even thought about. After cutting her fingernails, she would file them and paint them bright colors like pink or purple. One day after going shopping with her friends, she came back with all sorts of strange little compacts and bottles; make up. She would spend hours and hours in the bathroom, experimenting with the colors and creams, seeing which ones worked best together and which ones did not. There were other differences too but if I wanted to describe them all, I would grow old and die before I could.

The point is; I now knew there were quite a few differences between boys and girls.

Bras were one of the big ones, to me, so it was my mission to discover their true purpose. I pushed open the door and stepped inside, my bare feet sinking into the carpet. Her room was messy and full of girlish things like dolls, make up, a diary, and other such things that I had never imagined a person would need (Temari later realized she did not need them either and threw them out; she hit the tomboy stage at a strange time in her life). The dresser was at the far end of her room, next to the closet. I tried to be as quiet as I could as I walked toward it. Temari was sleeping heavily in her bed. It did not seem like she would wake up any time soon.

Finally, I reached my destination. I got down on my knees and pulled out the bottom drawer; socks. Frowning, I left it open and opened the one above it; jeans. Slightly annoyed, I continued opening the drawers until I reached the top, which contained the item I had been searching for. I grabbed two of the bras and sat down on the floor, spreading them out on the carpet. One of them had the clasp in the front, in between the two "cups," while the other one had it in the back with a series of tiny hooks. I did not understand the difference.

As I examined them, my curiosity only increased. These things had cups so obviously they were supposed to hold something up…but Temari had a flat chest. It made no sense. I stood up, frowning down at the bras and left the room, defeated.

The next morning I woke up to a shrill scream; Temari saw that someone had gone through her dresser. Of course, being the smart girl she is, it did not take her long to link the previous day's events together. I scrambled out of my bed and tried to get out of the house before she found me. But she was too quick for me. Before I even made it down the hallway, she grabbed the back of my shirt.

"Gaara, why do you have to be so stupid?" she asked, not letting go as I struggled, "Can't you just stay out of my stuff?" Not surprisingly, Temari was annoyed by my antics. She was probably sick of the things Kankurou did and did not want to put up with her other brother doing the same sort of things to her or her belongings. When it came down to it, she just wanted me to leave her alone.

After that, the hostility from Temari intensified. She told me to stay out of her room unless she gave me permission to come in. If I went against her orders, she would tell our Father and I would get into even more trouble so I did as I was told, even though I thought it was stupid.

Kankurou, who had always done his best to just ignore me and let me do as I pleased, also got in on the act. Obviously, he knew about what I had done so he thought he would help me out and give me some of his ingenious "Brotherly Advice." About a week after the dresser incident, as it came to be known, he pulled me into his messy room and shut the door. At that time, he was eleven years old and was starting to think that he, too, knew everything about the world.

"So you saw Temari's bras, huh?" he asked me as he sat down on his bed, a mischievous grin on his cat-like face.

I just nodded; talking about that made me a little embarrassed, even though it had not seemed like such a big deal at the time.

He snorted a laugh and gave my shoulder a playful push. "She doesn't even _have_ any boobs yet," he said, "But she wears those things 'cause all her friends do." Even though Kankurou was only two years older than me, he really did seem like he knew everything.

"I don't get it though. Why do they wear them if they don't have any?" I asked, still trying to understand why a bra was the object of such admiration among pre-teen girls.

Without warning, Kankurou ruffled my hair. I already had a slight phobia of physical contact…that was not going to change for years. "Gaara, you got a lot to learn about girls," he replied, "Bras are like status symbols, I guess. If you're a girl and you wear one, then you're cool. If you don't wear one, you're still a kid…Get it?"

I told him that I understood, although I was still uncertain about why underwear should be so important. One thing was for sure though; I was glad that I was not a girl and did not have to worry about things like "status symbols." At that time, I assumed boys remained the same forever, since Father and his co-workers all looked pretty much the same.

I did not think I was ever going to change.

(Author's Note: Whoo hoo, another chapter. So um…I hope everyone likes this! XD It will get more exciting now that Gaara is getting older, I promise! Thanks for reading!)


	4. I'm Definitely Shaking

Amputations

Part Four: I'm Definitely Shaking

I was eleven years old, standing in the bathroom, tentatively touching a huge mess of cuts on the left side of my forehead. It was three in the morning. My Father was away on business, so he had no idea what I had just done. Then again, neither did I. It was like the time when I sliced my hand, a few years before. This time, though, it was much worse. Not only did the cuts bleed heavily, but there were quite a few of them and would definitely scar.

Temari and Kankurou were both asleep. I almost wanted to wake one of them up and ask them for help but I was too scared; this time, it had been different. Instead of waking up on the floor somewhere in the house, I realized what I'd been doing while my hand was making the final (or at least I hope it was the final one) scratch. All this time, I thought that I had been unconsciously doing these things to myself. Now, I began to wonder if I was sleep walking…but that argument was quickly proven wrong. I was usually awake before these things happened.

In a way, it was like waking up in the middle of a dream or a nightmare. I stared at my reflection, trying to figure out what to do. The first thing would be to clean it and then somehow bandage it. Numbness spread throughout my body. My Father was scheduled to come home early the next afternoon. He would see what I had done…Even if I tried to go hide somewhere, Temari or Kankurou would rat me out.

Horrified, I cleaned the cuts as best I could, hissing softly as the disinfectant stung my head. Once all the blood was washed away, I tried to figure out what it was supposed to be. Since my reflection was flipped, it was hard to tell. After a few minutes of squinting and staring, however, it came into focus; the _kanji _for "love," a simple, twelve-stroke word. It was sloppy and hard to read but that was definitely what it was. Utterly confused, I continued to examine it, tenderly running my fingers over it just to make sure it was actually there and not just some sort of odd hallucination.

The pain that blossomed on my forehead stated that it was real and that I needed to put some sort of bandage over it before it started to bleed more. The cuts would open again if I did not act quickly.

Haphazardly, I pasted band-aids this way and that over the rough scratches. If I had been younger, I would have cried, but now I was almost a teenager. I needed to be tough, I told myself. I could not be scared of the things I did any longer. After all, just as my Father often said, "Crying is a sign of weakness." Over the years, this had become my mantra as well. I tried not to cry when other people hurt me or when I discovered that I was hurting myself.

I was not a child anymore.

Finished in the bathroom, I returned to my room and crawled back into my bed, careful not to lie on my left side. The pain was still incredibly intense but some how, perhaps due to the fact that I felt exhausted, I managed to fall back to sleep, spiraling away from the pain and the apprehension I felt about the coming day.

As soon as Temari and Kankurou realized that I was not coming out of my room the next morning, they both wanted to know what was going on. Kankurou yelled through the door to ask me if I was teaching myself how to masturbate and Temari was just insisting that I come out. I continued to reply that I was staying put. Most of the band-aids had fallen off during the few hours of sleep I had gotten. The cuts were still bleeding a little bit but they were not as bad as they were when I first saw them.

By mid-afternoon, however, I had to break my word and try to get to the bathroom without them seeing me. Nature was calling and that was a little hard to ignore. So, I opened the door as quietly as I could and ran across the hall, into the bathroom. My head was throbbing. It was hard to think about anything…But I was knocked out of my stupor when I heard the door open and close, my Father saying something to Temari and Kankurou. Anxiously, I opened the door and was about to go back into my room when he came down the hallway, giving me a suspicious look. I just stood there, staring at him, unable to move.

"Gaara, what did you do to your forehead?" he asked, noticing the pathetic band-aids right away.

I shook my head. "Nothing," I said stupidly. It was more than obvious that it was, in fact, something very bad, something that needed to be addressed. Now that these incidents were returning with a vengeance, I needed to do something about it. The only problem was that I did not know what to do.

His small eyes narrowed; a sign that he was already a little annoyed. "Then why are there band-aids all over it?" he continued. If I did not answer him honestly, he knew he could get an answer out of me anyway. He had done it plenty of times before.

My head hurt so much that I immediately decided to tell him the truth. I did not want a beating that day, not after what I had done to myself the night before. To the best of my ability, I described what happened. The memories of it all were fuzzy but I managed to tell him that I had not been asleep but I had not been aware of what I was doing, either.

He, too, had had enough of these so-called "incidents." I managed to avoid a beating, mainly since he was tired and sick of dealing with people.

A few hours later, he told me that I would not be going to school the next day, Monday, because I had to go see a doctor. That revelation did not sit well with me. My Mother had died in a hospital. The last time I had even been to one was to get a shot for the measles as a two-year-old. Still, the idea of going terrified me. But I had a feeling that I knew what this was about; the cuts on my forehead.

It was probably just going to be a simple check up to make sure that they did not get infected.

In a flash, it was time to go to the appointment. Amazingly, my Father went with me. I did not understand why a check up was so important to him. The prospect that it was more than that never crossed my mind until we went into the psychiatric ward. As an eleven-year-old, I knew what that word meant; I automatically associated it with crazy people. My heart sank. Of course Father thought I was crazy. Why wouldn't he? Temari and Kankurou did not cut words into their skin. They did not hurt the other kids at school. Both of them were normal, while I was like a freak in a sideshow.

We sat down in a waiting room. I was too numb to realize how uncomfortable the plastic chair was. For three years, I had been cutting myself. It was not a regular occurrence but now it seemed like it was getting worse. I tried to steel myself against my emotions so that I did not appear weak in front of other people in the company of my Father.

Thankfully, I did not have long to dwell on any thoughts about the previous night. A nurse came out and called my name. My Father made no move to get up. Apparently he was only going that far for me. Shakily, I got up and walked mechanically over to the nurse. I did not look back at him for fear of breaking down. The nurse was very tall and had a perfect, curvy body. As I followed her into the clinic, I focused on the way her hips swayed from side to side.

The doctor I was to speak with was not really a doctor in the sense of the word that I knew. He was a therapist. At that time, I had never really heard much about people like him so I really had no idea what to expect. The nurse opened the door and motioned for me to go inside. Nervously, I stepped over the threshold and took a moment to look around the room. It was not like any examination room I had ever seen on television. In fact, it was more like a fancy office that a rich business man might have, which meant it was incredibly out of place in a world of sterilizer and white wash walls.

A man sat behind an expensive looking desk, in a fancy leather chair. He was bald, with an odd burn wound on the top of his head, and wore a plaid bowtie. Despite his strangely festive clothing, he was very intimidating. His cold, brown eyes trailed me as I made my way to the four-legged chair in front of his desk. Swallowing hard even though my mouth was dry, I sat down and looked up at him, finding it difficult to look away.

"How long have you been cutting yourself?" was the first thing he said to me. He did not speak in questions as much as he spoke in demands.

I fidgeted, lacing my fingers together only to unlace them again in a matter of seconds. The faint scar on the palm of my left hand glinted in the fluorescent light. "Th-three years," I replied. Even if I had wanted to lie to this man, I knew he would be able to see right through me.

He scribbled something down on a pad of yellow paper. "Can you tell me about the first time you did it?"

It was impossible to relax but somehow, I managed to answer his demands through stutters and awkward sentences. He asked me about why I often "came back" in bathrooms or in closets. That, I told him, was something even I did not know. Luckily, he let that slide and continued to question me. His questions were not just about the wounds; he asked me about my relationships with my Father and my siblings. He asked me if I liked school and how I was treated by my fellow students. I tried to be as honest as I could in my replies, thinking it would be pointless and stupid to lie.

I sat in that room, answering his questions for hours. Every time I answered, he wrote down observations on his yellow pad of paper. During those few hours, though, something happened. There is a gap of time that I don't remember. It's like someone back in and erased whatever happened afterward, like a stupid mistake on a math test. Something important happened in that time span. Everything I remember afterward was different. He was even shorter with me, trying to get things done as quickly as possible so he did not have to deal with me any more.

The trip home was a silent one. I leaned against the window, staring absently out at the passing scenery. The therapist had not even told me what was wrong. He said he would contact my father when he was through with his evaluation but he mentioned nothing about telling me. The fact that I would not be informed bothered me. Whatever the problem was, was _my _problem, not my Father's.

That night, I lay in my bed, unable to sleep. I spent the whole time looking up at the ceiling, thinking about the past three years of my life. I tried to figure out what sort of things would have been signs to the therapist that there really was something wrong with me. Obviously, the times when I woke up with fresh cuts on my skin were blatant signals…But there had to be other things as well. A sinking feeling formed inside of me. The fact that I was so quick to get angry, the fact that I hurt other kids my age, the fact that I had no regard for my family…All of these things probably helped him back up his case, whatever it was.

I did not know it at the time, but that was going to be the first of many restless nights to come. It was hard to fall asleep when there were so many things that I had to think about. Eventually, it just became a habit…and then turned into insomnia.

A week later, I found a letter from the therapist on the table in the kitchen. Since no one was around and I knew it concerned me, I felt I had the right to read it. Hesitantly, I grabbed the letter and began skimming through it. Although it was about me, it felt like I was doing something that I shouldn't.

I really should not have looked at that letter.

A brief summary, since I do not wish to recall everything that it said, will suffice, I think.

_Your son shows signs of at least two alter egos. One is much more dominate than the other. This is common in people with Multiple Personality Disorder. People tend to have one other strong personality and any number of weaker ones, which do not have names or particularly noticeable habits. _

_What I was able to tell is that your son's other dominate "self" is also a male. He goes by the name "Shukaku" and acts much older than Gaara does. While your son displays violent tendencies, this alter ego shows a sadomasochistic side. This would explain the cuts and scars all over his body, the newest of which is the roughly made character on his forehead. _

_I would suggest that your son continues therapy and should start taking the medication I have provided information about in this letter. This disorder is something that can be cured but it will need both yours and your son's cooperation._

I dropped the letter, not really understanding anything that I had just read.

(Author's Note: OH SORT OF CLIFF-HANGER! Haha! Maybe? I don't know. Anyway, thanks for reading, again. Expect the next part soon! Peace out.)


	5. No Charm in Being Resident State Street

Amputations

Part Five: There's no charm in being resident state-street

Therapy did not continue. I did not get any medication. Since leaving the letter where I had found it, I have never seen or heard of it again. My Father acted no differently around me. He still treated me as the problem child that he simply had to deal with; the annoying splinter stuck in his thumb that he just could not pull out. Neither of my siblings knew about my problems either. They just thought I had gone to the doctor about the scratches on my forehead…although I had a feeling that they knew there was something a bit more serious going on.

Life became unbearably awkward for me. I had to keep the knowledge of my condition a secret, which does not sound very hard, but believe me when I say trying to act like I thought nothing was wrong when I knew something _was_ seriously wrong, was more difficult than I can say. At that time, I found myself wishing that Yashamaru was still there, to comfort me and tell me that there really was nothing wrong. So many years had passed since I had seen him…There was no telling what kind of person he was now. It did not matter to me; I just wanted to be with someone who understood me.

I was not sleeping. For almost a week since reading the letter, I lay awake at night, trying to figure out what I could do. The rumbling voice of the therapist rang through my ears again and again. He was reading the letter aloud. Every night, I heard it until I could repeat it myself with the same intonation and style. I thought about the way he stared at me, the way he scribbled down his observations, his impatient manner of speech. Sometimes I wondered if the reason he had wrote the letter was because he did not like me. I had come across many people in school who spread rumors about me because of their hatred for me…But this man was a doctor, when it came down to it. It was his job to tell the truth.

And he, like me, probably thought that lying was stupid.

When it came down to it, I was on my own in trying to figure out what to do about my problems. At my age, though, there really was not a thing that I could do to help my situation. My Father apparently did not think they were serious enough to deserve any further attention. Either that or he just did not want to pay for the health insurance and so forth.

I wanted to tell Temari and Kankurou what was going on. I felt that it would only be right that they know what is happening too. But I was apprehensive about talking to them. I was not sure if they would take me seriously or not. Over the years, we had not built up any sort of bonds. They were always doing their own separate things so I suppose it was only normal that they paid no attention to me. It was not that I _wanted_ attention; I just wanted someone to talk to, someone who could offer me some sort of advice.

Considering the way my life usually went, it really should not have surprised me that they already knew about it. The times when I lost consciousness, I began to realize, were the times when this "alter ego" came out. They probably knew more about my situation than I did, since the only thing I knew was what was in the letter. Neither of them had ever told me about it. While I had always suspected it that showed me that they really did not trust me at all.

Of course they knew. That explained so many things; the fact that they always tried to stay away from me, the fact that they never wanted to even speak with me…They were scared.

I was disgusted with myself. People had always been scared of me, I knew that, but with Temari and Kankurou, it was different. Part of me actually wanted them to accept me but now that they knew what was wrong, there was no way that would ever happen.

And so for a while, things were quiet.

Nothing ever stays the same though. On a cold day in February, after I had turned twelve, the three of us were out together. It was a rare thing for us to go places in a group but Temari seemed to want to spend time with my brother and me instead of chat on her cell phone for once. The three of us had gone down to a park because there really was nothing else to do. Most kids there were throwing snowballs at each other or riding on tires down soft slopes.

Kankurou decided that we should make a snowman. Without any better suggestions, Temari and I agreed. It was more than a little strange to be doing something with them. After spending so much time as estranged siblings, to suddenly decide to do something together seemed very random…but I had agreed to it anyway. I suppose that I was still holding on to some kind of hope that we could become closer than we actually were. Perhaps this was the sort of thing that we all needed, whether they were willing to admit it or not.

My actual memories of that day are somewhat fuzzy. I can still recall Kankurou's ugly jacket and the way it felt when he pelted me with a snowball but any memories of the conversations we had is like trying to remember dreams I had years ago. Things had been going so well that day until my emotions got the better of me, as they often do. The last thing I really remember before it happened is a snowball hitting me on the side of my head. Some kid from my school had thrown it.

Right after that, I was in the snow, on top of someone. It was not the kid who had thrown the snowball. My hands were around the person's neck…I could hear a voice calling my name, telling me to stop.

It was Temari.

My hands were around my sister's neck. I was strangling her.

Kankurou's hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me off of her. Bewildered, I let him throw me onto the ground. He was shouting at me, asking me why I was doing that. I had never seen him so angry before. Most of the time, he was an easy-going guy. But now, he was completely different. It was like something inside of him snapped.

Although I do not remember much of what he said, I do remember that he referred to me as "Shukaku."

_Shukaku_; the name in the letter.

Strangers were crowding around, telling us to stop. They had all seen it from the beginning. Everyone else knew what was going on while I, clueless, lay in the snow, trying to get a grasp on the situation. Temari had gotten up and was now staring down at me, a blatantly horrified look on her face. Seeing her like that made me want to melt into the snow; who was I kidding? We could never be a normal family. We could never get along…all because of me.

I went home that day with a split lip and more pressure to discover how I could get rid of Shukaku. Father asked us what happened. Kankurou had to explain since I did not remember and Temari's throat hurt too much to speak.

Later that night, I looked down at my hands, wondering why I had to hurt her, of all people. I did not want to do it anymore. I did not want to hurt anyone…But I could not stop myself. Nothing I could do would be good enough to prevent it from happening. I started wondering if it would get worse…if I would end up seriously injuring her or Kankurou.

It was two-am. Sick of the scenarios playing over and over in my head, I went into the living room and turned on the television, leaving the volume on low. The images were not very good distractions but eventually I was able to zone out and just stare at the screen.

Over the next few years, I learned more about Shukaku. While the information I had was sparse, it was enough to make assumptions about him. As a separate person from me he was an older man prone to violence. He had a short temper and seemed, as the therapist had stated, to be a sadomasochist. That was what bothered me the most. I did not care about what happened to my own body; it was my siblings that I was worried about. Seeing Temari like that had been bad enough…I did not want to make things more terrible than they were now.

My Father got a promotion the same year I was to start high school. That meant that he would have to go on more business trips than he did before, which was fine with me. In my opinion, the less I had to see of him, the better. That was something that Temari, Kankurou, and I all agreed on.

The start of high school also brought about other changes. Like most other fourteen-year-old boys, I hit puberty. Kankurou thought it was deathly hilarious the first time I woke up one morning, stuck to my bed sheets. I did not think it was funny at all. It was disgusting and incredibly embarrassing. Despite all the talk we got in school, it did not seem like a natural act or something to be "happy" about at all. It was just another function, just another change that the body underwent…and by now, I was sick of changes.

Regardless of that, I ignored Kankurou's teasing and managed to regain some sort of dignity. Temari did not voice her opinion on it. Kankurou had been loud enough to let the whole neighborhood know what was going on.

The night after that happened my brother took it upon himself to show me something "special." Once Temari had gone out, he called me over to his room and said that it was time for me to become a man. While this was not particularly enthralling, I went along with it and sat down on the floor, next to him. He pulled a cardboard box out from underneath his bed and opened it, all the while grinning from ear to ear like a cat about to eat a whole tuna.

Inside of the box were dozens of magazines. I frowned and looked inside, at the covers. They were all of women in uncomfortable poses with overly large breasts and little to no clothing. Kankurou grabbed a few of them and put them out on the floor for me to look at.

"You like porn, Gaara?" he asked me.

I told him no, that I'd never really looked at any before. It just was not appealing to me. All the girls looked fake and they were always doing the stupidest things.

Kankurou sighed and gave me a sympathetic look. "Someday, you'll understand," he said, "I guess you're still too young to appreciate art." He flipped through one of the magazines before piling them back into the box and shoving it under the bed once again.

"That's not art," I said with a snort, "It's just sex."

Apparently, that was funny. He started laughing and ruffled my hair. "Sex is art," he replied, "You know what a sixty-nine is?"

A number, yes, but somehow I got the feeling that was not what he meant. I shook my head. Kankurou was being the peanut gallery again, it seemed.

So, for the rest of the night, I obliged my brother and watched his stupid porno videos with him. None of them were interesting and none of them did anything for me. I did, however, discover what a sixty-nine was and that porn movie directors would use just about any ploy to get their actors to have sex. In a way, I thought it was sort of disturbing.

I could not imagine people being so desperate for money that they would take part in these stupid movies.

Then again, looking back, my favorite movies at that time were of the b-rated science fiction genre. The people in those were desperate actors as well, but my hypocritical teenage mind would not admit that they were alike in that aspect.

(Author's Note: This chapter was re-written 3 times. I love you guys that much that I just could not post the first draft…or the second. More to come soon! And…More characters, too!)


	6. Looking for Stable Ground

Amputations

Part Six: Looking for Stable Ground

The beginning of high school was exactly how I had imagined it would be. Any prejudices, cliques, or rivalries that had started in junior high carried over, increasing strength and becoming more permanent.

I, however, was going to school in a new district for a number of reasons. Father wanted me in a place where he thought no one would know of the problems I'd had in the past (I asked myself if he thought Shukaku was just going to go away now that I was in high school. I also wondered if he did not think he was responsible for most of my faults). Also, it appeared that this new school would present a harder challenge and had a more prestigious reputation than the school I was originally supposed to go to.

As usual, Father put his interests first. I had been content, or as content as I could be where I was. It had been stable ground, even though I hated the people I was surrounded by. I knew what to expect and I knew how to deal with what was presented to me. After growing up with them, I had become accustomed to their childish habits and their pre-teen drama.

Now that had all been ripped away from me, like a rug torn from underneath my feet. My search for a sense of where I stood began again. I tried to tell myself that everything would be the same. The people would still be distant and uninterested. That was how I wanted it to stay; I did not want people to ask questions about me; about the scars on my forehead or any other oddities they might notice. But the unfortunate truth was that I was going somewhere new, somewhere where no one knew me. I would have to establish everything all over again.

What I stupidly did not think about was the fact that Temari and Kankurou also went to that school. I had blindly assumed that they would not tell their classmates about me, for fear of their friends thinking that they were just as weird as I was.

The first week of school showed me that the other freshmen all knew each other and were fairly satisfied with the way things were. In a way, I supposed that would make my transition easier; I would not have to put up with people wanting to try and get to know me. For a few weeks, my prediction was proven correct. No one took any notice of me. I sat quietly in the back, doing my best to ignore the other students and concentrate on the lessons.

But that all changed when I saw _him _again. After seven years, I had almost forgotten about the three so-called "friends" I had made during the summer in which I spent most of my time in the swamp. By "him" I mean Naruto. Uzumaki Naruto, the kid who had caught the bull frog. Back then, when we had been separated, I had not imagined that I would ever see him again.

He showed up two weeks into classes. I was sitting outside, just taking some time to be alone instead of following the other kids in my class to the cafeteria. During my years in high school, I think I went in there once. It smelled disgusting, was too noisy, and full of people that I hated. I spent most of my time in between classes outside, staying as far away from the other students as I could manage.

But one day, Naruto came along and found my hiding place. He did not recognize me. I was seated on a bench, reading, when he flopped down next to me and started reading nosily over my shoulder. It was as if he had absolutely no clue about manners. Frustrated, I shut the book and looked at him. He was taller than me now…but he looked more or less the same; still the shock of blond hair, the big blue eyes, and the affinity for blue and orange. The only thing that had changed was the fact that he was already growing facial hair.

"What're you reading?" he asked, tilting his head slightly to get a better look at the cover. It was not too surprising that he did not know who I was. Seven years was a long time and I knew that I did not look much like I did back then anymore. Not only that, but a boy like him probably had tons of friends. They probably came and went and he barely noticed, I thought.

I sighed and showed him the book. Once satisfied that he had read the title, I shoved it back into my bag and was about to get up to find another place where I could be alone. Unfortunately for me, it seemed that Naruto had other plans on his mind. He stuck out his hand, like he was expecting me to shake it. "My name's Uzumaki Naruto!" he exclaimed enthusiastically.

For a moment, I just started down at his hand, not really wanting to take it in my own. Reluctantly, I offered him my hand, letting him shake it as vigorously as he wanted to. "I'm Gaara," I said blandly. Ever since childhood, I left off my last name when I introduced myself to my peers. In a way, I supposed it was because I did not want people to know who my father was. Among the people in our city, he was fairly well known. Besides, I was sure Kankurou and Temari had told people of our relation to him already anyway. They were not proud of it but it kept people from bothering them, for the most part. In that aspect, they were like me. Neither of them wanted any sort of publicity around the school (although Kankurou apparently had a reputation as a party animal).

Briefly, a look of recognition crossed Naruto's face but it vanished in the blink of an eye. "Nice to meet you!" he said. He had enough energy for both of us.

I did not say anything in order to agree. Really, I would have been fine not knowing anyone at the school at all…but knowing that Naruto was there led me to believe that his friends, Sakura and Sasuke, were there as well. That thought made me uneasy. While they did not know me very well, they still _knew_ me. My mind began producing scenario after scenario of them picking up stories about me from my siblings. Undoubtedly, if they found out about Shukaku or any of my other problems, within a day, the whole rest of the school would know.

Over the years, I had worked up an affinity to solitude. I was not the affection starved child I had once been. Now I was quite the opposite; I preferred doing things alone and hated it when other people tried to interfere. By this point in my life, I had grown tired of accepting help from people like teachers or school nurses (I acquired countless cuts and bruises in fights). I wanted to do things on my own, so that I did not have to deal with anyone…so that no one could find out that I really was some sort of freak.

Upon seeing Naruto again, I began to think that my time in high school would be different than anything I had experienced before. Seeing him brought out old memories, some of which I secretly treasured, others I desperately wanted to forget. But unlike the memory loss I suffered because of my disorder, I could not bury memories away.

Or so I thought, anyway.

The mind works in mysterious ways.

My mostly one-sided conversation with Naruto dwindled down into him talking about how much he wanted ramen after a few minutes. He asked me to come along but I quickly denied the offer, saying that I had some homework that I needed to do. I was not sure what I thought of seeing him again just yet and I needed some time to let that sink in. Meanwhile, even if he did recognize me, he seemed to be just fine with the way things were.

Thankfully, Naruto left and I was alone once more. I relaxed and leaned back against the bench. Strangely enough, he had not questioned the scars on my forehead. That was usually the first thing people asked me about, or if they were trying to be polite, they just stared at it silently, wondering what it was. Even if they had asked me, I would not be able to tell them. I did not understand its significance either. The things that my body did while Shukaku was in control made little to no sense to me; just as my disorder suggested, he was another person entirely.

Although I had seen Naruto again, it had been a few weeks since classes started and I had not yet seen Sakura or Sasuke. The logical reason would be that they had transferred or were simply in other classes. I was not looking for them, since I was nervous that _they _might recognize me. Naruto had not…but the other two were very different than he was. I did not want to take any chances.

By the time September came, I had managed to remain anonymous for a while. Barley anyone knew my name and I rarely saw my siblings in the hallways. A false sense of hope bloomed in my chest; maybe I would really get what I wanted for a change; solitude, a sense of independence.

For the first time in years, I began to feel content with the way my life was heading. I could not think of anything that I desperately needed to change because I no longer felt the need to be accepted by others, whether it was Temari, Kankurou, or even Naruto.

I just didn't give a damn.

That, perhaps, was the best thing about being a careless teenager. However, nothing stays the same (which is a very appropriate saying in my life), and my carefree days soon came to an end when I met someone who would change my life for ever.

The one elective I was allowed to take as a freshman was a drawing class. Other kids chose band or choir or even drama, but drawing was something that allowed some sense of individualism. Kankurou had said I was just trying to be like him, since he was quite skilled at drawing, but really, I just wanted something where I would not have to share my ideas vocally.

After school one day, I was forced to wait for my siblings for three hours at the school. Kankurou had a meeting for the basketball team and Temari had practice for a play she was in. With nowhere else to go, I went to the room where the drawing class was, thinking that no one else would be in there and that I could do some work on my own.

There was one other person already in the room, seated in the far right corner, silently working on something. I took a moment to look and see if I recognized him. This boy, an upperclassman, was completely unfamiliar and it even took me a moment to realize that he _was _a boy at all. Overall, he appeared very feminine, with his long brown hair pulled into a neat ponytail and his flawless, pale skin. He was tall (taller than me, anyway) and had a very clean look about him. When he saw me, his dark eyes met with mine and he did nothing but acknowledge me with a smile.

Awkwardly, I moved across the room and gathered my supplies. The still life that the instructor had set up was still there so I set to work on that. It was starting to appear that I was having perspective problems; my pieces always ended up distorted somehow, whether it was foreshortening or shading. I just was not meant to be an artist.

It did not take long for the older boy to notice that I was having trouble. I don't know if he had been watching me or if I had just made it obvious that I was frustrated. He got up from where he was sitting and set down his sketchbook. I tried not to think that he was going to come over to where I was. Of course that was what he did. Without any words, he looked over my piece, an unreadable expression on his calm face.

He was not the instructor, I wondered to myself, so why was he inspecting my work?

I did not protest when he took one of my pencils. "Do you mind if I give you some advice?" he asked. His voice was strangely androgynous, much like his overall appearance.

My first reaction was to tell him to leave me alone but my mouth acted against my brain. "Go ahead," I said, unsure of how exactly I should reply to that.

That same small smile formed on his lips again. "If you go against the form of the figure while you're shading, you'll get a much better feel," he said, making small, individual diagonal lines across the contours I'd drawn. "See? You were trying to shade with the shape of it, which sort of makes it confusing…I mean, it's not bad, really, it's just kind of odd."

_Kind of odd._

Those were words he used to describe a lot of things.

When he brought his hand away, I looked at what he had done. Already it looked much better, unlike anything I had ever done. "Oh…" was all I could really say. Now that he had pointed it out to me it seemed so simple, so obvious. I wondered why I had not thought of that sooner.

"Do you understand?" he asked, giving me a questioning look. For some reason, he reminded me of someone but I could not place who exactly.

I nodded. "Thanks." I had not said that to anyone in a long time…but it felt appropriate in that situation.

He shook his head. "It's no problem," he said, "Oh, my name's Haku, by the way." It was a simple name for a seemingly simple person. Appearance wise, there was not anything too complicated about him.

"I'm Gaara."

His smile widened slightly. "It's nice to meet you, Gaara-kun."

If I had known then what direction my life was about to turn, I think I would have tried to stop it. But I was just a fourteen year old who hardly had any idea about teenage society.

My journey into the hierarchy of cliques, sex, and drugs was only beginning and Haku was my guide.

(Author's Note: This took a bit longer to write because I've been busy with school. Ah, college life! Oh, and this is not strictly a HakuGaa/GaaHaku fic, by the way. It's going to change.

Expect the next chapter soon!)


	7. Different Names for the Same Thing

Amputations

Part Seven: Different names for the same thing

Every Thursday afternoon, I had to wait for my siblings after school. Just as I had the first time, I waited in the drawing classroom. But I really did not draw very much when I was in there; the upperclassman, Haku, was always there as well. Despite my predispositions about making friends, there was something about him that attracted me, like a moth to a flame. The more we were together, the more intrigued I became.

We talked about many things but never ourselves. Haku asked no questions and I did the same. It seemed we were comfortable just talking about school or music but if something personal came up because of it, it was always pushed aside by a quick change of subject. Through that method, I suppose we did become friends. Strange though it was, we seemed to have a lot in common and (from my point of view) enjoyed each others' company.

After meeting with him for three weeks, we finally decided to go somewhere instead of that classroom. Haku wanted to go outside "to get some fresh air" as he put it when he really wanted to smoke a cigarette. While it surprised me that he smoked at first, I pushed away any curiosity (Kankurou picked up the habit when he was fifteen so it really was not a big deal) and just let him do as he pleased. Really, if Haku had said he wanted to go to the bathroom and shoot up some heroin, I would not have cared. I liked him and I was not about to loose him as a friend over something so frivolous.

I followed him outside. It was the middle of October, so the temperature was pretty cool. Haku lit up a cigarette and held the pack out to me. "Do you want one?" he asked.

Kankurou had never offered me one before. He had always said that it was a dirty habit and someone like me should not do it. I was about to say no but then I wondered that if I did not take one, would Haku still like me? Going against everything that had been drilled into my head in primary school, I accepted a cigarette. I had seen people smoke before so I figured it could not be very difficult and that it probably tasted all right.

Haku handed me his lighter. After fumbling with it for a few moments, I managed to light it up. I could feel his eyes on me the whole time. "Have you ever smoked before?" he asked me, a slightly amused smile on his lips.

"No, I just thought I'd try it," I replied, trying to appear casual. Smoking had seemed so taboo according to the teachers in school and now it seemed like it would be something simple, something to just try. I did not think I would get addicted. Like every other teenager, I thought I would stay unaffected.

Before I put it to my lips, Haku put his hand on my shoulder. It was the first time he had ever touched me. His fingertips sent tingles through my arm. "Just don't swallow the smoke, ok? It'll make you sick," he said, always full of strange, yet obvious advice.

I nodded and stuck the cigarette between my lips. Slowly, a bit nervously, I inhaled. My eyes watered as the smoke filled my lungs, nicotine infiltrating my supposedly healthy body. It did not taste good and really, it did not feel too good either; because after a moment, I was coughing and doubling over. It was definitely the most embarrassing situation I had been involved with in a long time.

Haku did not laugh at me though, like I thought he might. Instead, he just smiled and said, "It'll take a few times to get used to it, but after a while, it starts to feel really good." As if for an example, he took a drag and exhaled, smoke flowing from his mouth and up into the crisp fall air. He made it look so easy.

I tried and tried again and after a while, it did start to feel good. My body began to adjust to the nicotine and I relaxed.

Outside, under a browning tree, we began to talk about ourselves. Cigarettes had broken the ice. "You're a freshman, right?" Haku asked as he sat down, leaning back against the trunk of the tree. He looked up at me from that position, his dark eyes studying me. I wondered what he was thinking.

"Yeah, I am," I said as I sat down next to him, "Why?"

Haku shrugged. "Just curious," he replied, "I'm a junior and I know your brother, Kankurou." Of course. _Of course_ they knew each other. They were probably even in the same drawing class. A feeling of dread seeped through my veins. There was no telling what sort of things Kankurou had told him. He had no shame in spreading embarrassing stories about Temari, me, and occasionally even himself.

I frowned and glanced over at him. "He hasn't told you anything about me, has he?" I asked, trying to make myself sound as indifferent as I could. The look on my face probably gave everything away though.

"No, not really," Haku said, "Just that you're a bit of a mean kid…But I don't really see that." It did not surprise me that Kankurou had told people that I was "mean" as he had put it. Truthfully, I was a mean kid so in that sense I did not care that he had told people I did not know that. It was the least of my problems.

"Oh," I said simply. There was no point in denying it.

My answer did not seem satisfactory for Haku. "Do you think you're a mean kid?" he asked, fixing me with an inquiring gaze. His dark eyes were as unreadable as they ever were. It was as if he had put up some sort of barrier between other people and himself. In that aspect, I thought we were alike.

I really was not sure if I should answer that question honestly. I knew the things I did to people were mean, even cruel on occasion. But I had only met Haku recently and I did like him very much…I did not want to lose him as a friend, or whatever he was, that quickly. "I don't know," I replied, "Some of the things I do aren't really…nice but it's not like people have been very nice to me, either." Of course, in most cases, I brought things upon myself.

Haku mused over my words, thoughtfully taking a drag on his diminishing cigarette. His face held little emotion but in his eyes, I noticed a change. It was as if my words had brought back some old memory of his. "Well, I won't make assumptions about what's happened to you," he said, his eyes flicking over to the scars on my forehead for a split second, "But I certainly don't think you're a mean person."

Our friendship continued in that fashion. We revealed very little about ourselves. All I knew about Haku for a long time was that he was originally from up north and was now living on his own in a small apartment close to the school. Like him, I revealed very little as well. I told him I had grown up here and that my Mother had passed away when I was young, so now I lived with my Father and my siblings. Haku did not seem too curious about what happened to my Mother. I don't know if it was general lack of interest or if it was because of the fact that he never had parents of his own, as I later came to discover.

I did not think that Haku could have any sort of questionable reputation but when Temari found out I had become friends with him, she did not take it too lightly. She confronted me about it one day when Kankurou had gone off with his friends from the basket ball team. We were walking back to our house and she said she had something that she wanted to talk to me about. Normally, Temari stayed out of my business, so my first thought was that it was just something that involved school.

She looked down at me, her turquoise eyes showing a bit of apprehension. Looking back, she probably did not want to confront me, considering my tendencies for violence. "I heard you've been hanging around with that Haku kid," she began slowly.

"Yeah…So?" I asked, failing to see the point of this conversation. Haku and I never did anything bad, really; we just sat outside and smoked cigarettes. I hardly saw anything wrong with that. But I suppose Temari was a bit more level-headed than I was and probably knew something bad would come of our relationship.

My retort did not make her happy. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You don't know anything about Haku, do you?" she asked, trying hard to stay patient with me.

"Not really, no," I said. There was no point in lying about that but I was still failing to see why my friendship with him was worth discussing. If there was some sort of problem, I thought that she should have brought it up sooner than that. It had been months now since our first meeting.

Temari sighed and shook her head slightly. "Well, I'm not one to spread rumors or anything," she said warily, "But just be careful around Haku, ok? I don't think he's really as nice as he seems to be." If I had known then that my sister was much more talented at reading people than I thought she was I would have taken her words to heart and distanced myself from Haku. The unfortunate reality, however, was that I thought that she was full of hot air.

"I don't care if he's not nice to everybody or not," I said indifferently, "He's not mean to me, so there's no point in telling him to leave me alone." This was the stubborn part of me speaking. Temari's warning did nothing but irritate me.

I saw her role her eyes. "Just don't be surprised if something weird happens," she said, a bit ambiguously.

And that was all that she said about Haku for a long time.

What she meant by "weird" was beyond me. Truth be told, at that time, I thought Haku was the most normal person I had ever met. Temari and Kankurou both had their own strange kinks and Haku had yet to reveal any of his. Even after Temari's warning, I looked at him no differently. I ignored my sister and told myself that Haku was just like everybody else that he wanted friends, and was maybe a little desperate if he wanted to try and be friends with me.

For a while, I was able to believe that.

If Kankurou knew about my friendship with Haku, he chose to stay quiet about it. That was his way with more or less everything though. Unlike my sister or me, he was a fairly easygoing guy. Nothing really ever seemed to bother him. I often wondered how he could go through life by just shrugging and saying "Not my problem." Occasionally, I envied his carefree attitude. I wondered that if I was like him, maybe I would not have the problems that I had.

Such a thought was stupid on my part. My problems were ones that had formed from complex incidents. They were not about to go away so easily.

The end of the first semester of high school was another turning point in my life. By that point, Haku and I began spending more time together. Aside from our weekly meetings on Thursdays, we spent the weekends when he was not working together as well. Most of the time we went out around town, until one day Haku called me and asked me to come to his apartment; apparently he had a cold and did not want to go out anywhere.

I obliged and wrote down the directions as he dictated them over the phone. Temari, who was also at home, gave me a wary look the whole time. As soon as I put the phone back on its cradle, she decided to put her two cents in.

"Don't do anything you'll regret later," she said.

I was starting to get sick of her cryptic bullshit.

"You're not my Mom, quit telling me what to do," I retorted childishly as I grabbed my jacket and headed toward the door.

Temari grabbed my shoulder and forced me to turn back around. "Don't," she said harshly, "Don't you ever say something like that to me again." There was something else in her voice but at the time I was too absorbed with my own issues to realize what it was.

She was worried about me.

(Author's Note: Whoo! New Chapter. Hopefully more will happen in the next one. Haha. I bet this was boring! Sorry!)


	8. It's Hard to Nevermind

Amputations

Part Eight: It's Hard to…Never-mind.

It was a twenty minute walk to Haku's apartment. His directions had been perfectly clear so luckily, I had no trouble finding it at all. The apartment was in a poorer section of town, though it was not falling apart, like many of the buildings that surrounded it. I stopped for a moment when I reached the entrance. An air of foreboding floated around me, as if trying to warn me that I should not go inside.

The automatic doors slid open, welcoming me. I pushed away any hesitation that I had and went in. A few of the people in the lobby gave me curious looks, as I was hardly a "local" to the area, but I ignored their prying eyes and made a straight line to the elevator. I pushed the yellow 'up' button and stepped back, keeping my eyes on the numbers above the elevator doors. Someone else joined me, a tall, thin, red haired girl. She was chewing enthusiastically on a piece of gum and smelled faintly of marijuana.

After about a minute, the doors opened and the two of us stepped inside. The girl pushed the button for floor number five. I hit number six and resolved to leaning against the wall.

I tried, with difficulty, not to look at her. She was unusually skinny. Her hair was long, vivid, and rested on her shoulders like a sleeping animal. The clothes she wore were tight fitting and revealed more than they covered up. She was tapping her foot (she was wearing a pair of flimsy flip-flops) to a beat that only she could hear. The elevator played no music.

She fixed me with a hard stare, her blue-green eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Do I got somethin' on my face, kid?" she asked a slightly offended tone in her voice. She looked at me with the expression someone might wear when they inspected a smelly, dead fish.

"No."

The elevator was taking longer than I had expected. Next time, I decided that I would take the stairs.

The girl blew a bubble with her gum and immediately popped it. "Wha'cha lookin' at me for, then?" she continued, obviously not in a particularly decent mood. I had done nothing to make her mad, but I had been staring. That was sometimes all it took to send someone over the edge.

"No reason." I was not too curious about her. She was not very pretty and she had a strange way of talking. As I spoke, I noticed that she had drawn her eyebrows on with a make up pencil. They did not match her hair color at all; they were black.

She snorted a laugh as the elevator came to a halt. "Cute, kid, real fuckin' cute," she said, "I'll be seein' ya around. Visit me sometime too, call boy." Giggling at her own private joke, she stalked out of the elevator. "Name's Tayuya. Room 509. Got it? Good." She winked at me and was gone.

…Call boy?

I could only wonder what she meant as the doors closed again the elevator began to ascend once more. If she was the sort of person who inhabited this apartment building, I was not sure I would like to go there too often. Haku, at least, acted like a normal person. He did not talk like an uneducated drug addict, nor did he give people odd nicknames. Unlike Tayuya, Haku was normal.

After another minute, the elevator reached the sixth floor. The doors opened and I stepped out, into a dank hallway. Two of the lights had burned out, giving the whole hallway a dim look, like something one might see in a nightmare. I took a deep breath and walked to Haku's door. The false gold numbers against the wood burned into my skull; room 606. I lifted my hand and knocked on the door. For a moment, I looked back to the elevator. It seemed much further away than it really had been.

I did not wait long; only a few moments after I knocked, Haku opened the door. He gave me a hazy smile and moved aside to let me enter. Over the phone he had not sounded too bad, but seeing him in person…he looked like a train wreck. It was completely different from the constantly perfect Haku I knew at school. Now, his long hair was in a tangled mess, haphazardly put into some sort of bun at the back of his head. His skin had a sickly look and his eyes appeared to be a little glazed over.

"Are you sure you're well enough for visitors?" I asked, standing close to the doorway in case he did change his mind. I did not want to be a burden to him.

Haku gave me a careless shrug and went further into the one room apartment. He sat down on the floor, by a low table and motioned for me to join him. "Don't worry about it," he said, obviously congested, "I don't think I'm contagious or anything." As he spoke, he got a cigarette out of the pack sitting on the table and lit it up after fumbling with the lighter a few times.

An awkward silence followed.

I took that time to look around the apartment. The first thing I noticed was how incredibly small it really was. It was as if the two of us were sardines in a tiny can, squished in with all of Haku's belongings. The room itself was clean and sparsely furnished, leaving an area for Haku to roll out his futon every night. There was a little kitchenette, though the oven and the sink looked like they could fall apart at any moment. All in all, the place was more or less how I had imagined it. Haku was not the sort of person to spend a lot of time making the apartment look lived in or perfect…but he was not the sort to leave it uncared for, either.

"You want a cigarette?" Haku asked, holding the pack out to me in an unenthusiastic manner. His words brought me out of my thoughts and back to the fact that I was visiting Haku, not just inspecting his apartment on my own.

I nodded. "Yeah," I replied simply and took one out of the pack. He handed me his lighter, which was almost out of fluid. Once I lit the end, I took a long drag and then exhaled, the smoke drifting up into the air, lazily surrounding both of us.

Haku gave me a strange look as he tapped the ashes into the old, glass ashtray on the table. "I heard something a little weird the other day," he said, "You know…" There was a blatant pause. "My friend told me there's a language that's got a thousand different words for 'love'. Sort of how there's a hundred different words for 'snow' in all those Eskimo languages."

I was not sure if he had meant for the pause or not. It almost seemed as though he had wanted to tell me something else and then thought better of it. "Don't we have different words for that, too?" I asked, going along with Haku's strange subject. Meanwhile, my mind was busy wondering just what he was originally going to say, but there was no way I could ask him without putting him in an uncomfortable situation.

He seemed to think my question over quite thoroughly before giving me an answer. "Yeah, I think we do. Love, affection, affinity…sex," he replied, "But I don't really think the last one fits that well." With a quick shrug, Haku smiled at me a bit deviously.

…Sex? That had nothing to do with what we were talking about. Haku was acting very strange, so I just blamed it on the fact that he was sick and was probably not thinking straight. "Not really," I said. Suddenly I felt awkward. We were just talking about something stupid, pointless, totally irrelevant to anything. It made no sense for me to get antsy about any of it.

"Hmm…Gaara, have you ever had sex?" Haku asked me, apparently pretty interested in the topic. He did not seem to have any hesitations in asking me that question either. It had slipped from his lips as easily as anything else he had ever said to me.

I stared at him, almost unable to believe he had just asked me such a thing. When we talked at school, Haku never spoke of anything like that. Now that we were alone, it seemed to be all that he was interested in. "Er, no," I replied slowly, "I'm only fourteen…" Age really had nothing to do with it. I had no interest at all in sex or anything of the sort. Most boys around my age were discovering sex and were all extremely thrilled by the idea of it. I thought it was disgusting. I couldn't stand the idea of merging my body with someone else's. As selfish as it sounds, that was how I felt. Those feelings have not changed much.

A smile twitched onto his mouth. It almost looked like Haku was going to laugh. "Do you want to?" He continued the string of questions as if he were some sort of strange, sexual therapist. It did not bother him at all that it was really none of his business at all.

"Not really," I said, hoping that would be the end of it.

It wasn't.

Haku's smile turned into a frown. "Why not," he persisted, as if he were offended by my answer.

I did not understand why this mattered so much. Sex was just something I had never bothered to think about or desire. There was no way I was the only person in the world to feel that way. "It doesn't matter," I said. It really didn't. Haku's insistence and curiosity were starting to put me on edge. I knew if he did not stop soon, something bad would happen and I would end up losing the only friend I ever had.

He sighed and smashed the end of his cigarette out in the ashtray. "Your choice; just thought I'd ask," he said, "It's a little overrated anyway." Haku gave the ashtray an idle, almost bored look before turning his gaze back to me.

Now it was my turn to be curious. "What do you mean?" I asked. Just moments ago, he had seemed to hold it in such high esteem…Now it was as if he hardly enjoyed it at all.

Haku scratched at the back of his head. "It's kind of hard to explain, but…Well…Once you've done it once, it's like you've done it a million times," he said, "The whole special feeling is gone, like it gets scrubbed off more and more every time you do it. I don't know. It's just not that fun, really." He sat back, lowering his arm away from the table, a thoughtful expression on his face.

His answer barely made any sense to me. I did not know what this 'special feeling' was that he had mentioned or how it could eventually vanish over time. My brother always made it sound as though sex was the best thing that could ever happen to a person. "So…Are you saying that I shouldn't waste my time?" I asked. If he said that was the case, then I would know for sure that my disinterest was not a strange thing at all. In fact, if he said I was right, then I would finally feel some sort of sense of normalcy.

"No, that's not it at all," Haku said, laughter in his voice, "You just have to find the right person to share that special feeling with. If you do it with someone who's not that special person, then it's just a bad feeling, a nasty situation you'd rather get out of as quickly as possible. But when you do find that special person, nothing else matters. It's like you're invincible and no body can even try to hurt you." I could only assume that he was speaking from experience, which led me to believe that he already had this 'special person' he was talking about.

"Do you have a special person yet, Gaara?"

That question took me by surprise. I did not count anyone as a special person. Haku was the closest that had ever become something of a friend, but I was not sure if I felt anything beyond friendship for him. Love was not something I felt. I had realized that years before. I hardly even knew what love really was. At one point, my uncle had tried to explain it to me, but his words were lost on me now.

"No."

"You've never been in love, then?"

"No!" I was sick of Haku's personal questions. As someone who had never felt love or received love from anyone, there was no way I could have known if I had ever _been _in love in the first place.

I blacked out.

(Author's Note: Wow. College is eating my soul. But the semester is basically over so expect more from me soon!)


End file.
